Colo. Tea Party Challenger Aims to Unseat Salazar's Senate Heir

Published: October 7, 2010

Tea party politics has caught fire in Colorado, where Sen. Michael Bennet (D), the Democratic successor to former senator and now-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, is being pushed to the brink by GOP challenger and tea party favorite Ken Buck.

Bennet, a Yale-educated lawyer who has never won elected office -- he was appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter (D) to finish Salazar's Senate term -- believes the government must act aggressively to reduce greenhouse gases and drive the expansion of renewable energy through tax subsidies and the use of federal land.

Such positions, which largely mirror the Obama administration's policies, stand in stark contrast to Buck's small government, and some say anti-environmental, rhetoric. Among other things, Buck has openly challenged the science behind global climate change and believes the federal government should keep out of state energy policies.

"I just think we have a lot of people who don't like the federal government right now," said Steve Belinda, energy policy manager at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

But the outcome of the Bennet-Buck contest could have wide-ranging implications not only in Colorado -- which has one of the nation's strongest renewable energy standards -- but across the West, political observers say. Some say it could even serve as referendum on the Obama administration's energy and public lands policies, which have been largely shaped by Salazar's Interior Department.

Recent polling shows Bennet trailing Buck by a narrow margin, and the Sierra Club announced this week that it would mobilize staff members in the state to aid in Bennet's election effort.

"In many of these races, there is a clear choice between a candidate with a strong environmental record and a candidate who sides with polluters rather than with the public," said Ken Brame, chairman of the Sierra Club political committee, in a statement announcing the group's new push in 29 tight races nationwide. "Sierra Club's thousands of volunteers will be pounding the pavement, working the phone lines, and talking with their friends and neighbors to help get environmental champions elected" (E&ENews PM, Oct. 4).

Sue Brown, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation Action Fund, the political arm of National Wildlife Federation, said the Colorado Senate race could be pivotal to the Obama administration's policy momentum going forward. "If Michael Bennet is not re-elected, and if there is a major overhaul of the leadership in the Senate, many conservation and clean energy issues are not going to see any action at a time when we really need action."

Clean energy vs. jobs

But supporters of Buck say such policies reflect a federal bureaucracy run amok. A winning tea party campaign theme, particularly in the resource-rich West, is that the federal government wields too much control over public lands and that states should assert their rights to determine how such lands are used.

Buck has called for measures that would wean the United States off foreign oil, and he argues the path to "energy independence," at least in the immediate future, is to increase development of domestic fossil fuels.

"We can't meet our energy demands with windmills and solar panels and other alternatives in the near term. We may get to that point in the next decade or two, but we're not there today," Buck wrote on his campaign website. "For now, we must continue to depend on our traditional sources of energy -- coal, oil and especially natural gas."

A spokesman for Buck's campaign did not return calls seeking comment for this story.

Such positions have won Buck friends in the oil and natural gas sector, which has poured more than $33,000 into Republican campaign coffers as of mid-September, according to data compiled by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Responsive Politics.

Buck also has stressed the oil and gas industry remains a major employment sector in Colorado and creates thousands of high-paying jobs. A dramatic shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy could lead to an erosion of oil and gas jobs and place even greater stress on already suffering rural economies.

For his part, Bennet refutes claims that he wants to weaken traditional energy sectors like oil and gas, even mirroring some of Buck's comments on using natural gas as a "bridge fuel" to longer term alternative energy sources.

"We are not going to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil through investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency alone," he wrote on his campaign's website. "I believe we should prioritize the development and export of Colorado's vast natural gas resources as one way to help our country steer clear of foreign oil."